Paramore are huge in America; quite literally - gigantic billboards adorned with their faces have hung in Times Square. Yet the four members of the band, compromising vocalist Hayley Williams, brothers Zac and Josh Farro (on drums and guitar respectively) and bassist Jeremy Davies, are barely old enough to have left school, let alone be leading a new punk pop phenomena.

Just ahead of the release of new single ‘Misery Business’, New Noise got an all too short ten minutes to ask Jeremy and Josh about life and stuff. Conscious that the young have ferociously short attention spans, we decided to keep things simple, asking them to list their all time favourite three things from a range of different categories. Still, even this sort of journalistic short cut couldn't take away the feeling we'd just interviewed the sons of Bill & Ted...

Bands:
Josh: “Oh man, well this is hard…I guess they’d be, in no particular order, Jimmy Eat World, Death Cab For Cutie and Sunny Day Real Estate. I guess it’s because they’ve all influenced me so much in my music, especially Jimmy Atkins [Jimmy Eat World] and Ben Gibbard [Death Cab]. They’re so talented man!”
Jeremy: “Aw you stole Jimmy! It’s so true though, although I think I’d say Muse, the Giggelettes and Mute Math. Although if you’re talking about influences then Shakira and Beyonce have to factor in there somewhere I’m sure.”

Gig Venues:
Josh: “Do they have to be in the UK or can they be from all over the world?”
NN: “Uh… Whatever you prefer really…”
Josh: “Well in that case, the 9.30 Club in Washington DC, The House of Blues in California and the Avalon in LA.”
Jeremy: “Yeah definitely the Avalon, although I prefer the one in Boston. My favourite though was in Paris called Le Zenith, it was soo cool. They had, like, eight showers, and a hot tub and a Jacuzzi backstage. It was more like a palace than a gig venue, it was awesome!"

Descriptions of your music:
Josh: “Um…well, I guess…energetic. [long pause] Hmm, well AP magazine gave a 'pretty useful’ description of us when they said we were ‘young sounding’. I mean, we are, I guess... Oh, and the third would be ‘honest’. We always try and talk about things that are going on in our lives, we don’t try and lie about anything and I think that it really comes across when we play.”

Songs to play live:
Josh: “Well I’d say, ‘Misery Buiness’, ‘What You Get’ and ‘Pressure’ especially ‘Pressure’. I really like the guitar riffs in it."
Jeremy: “Personally I’d go for older tracks, though I’m totally with you on ‘Pressure’. The other two would be ‘Here We Go Again’ and ‘My Heart’ though I think. I like playing all our songs though…”

Things that fans have done to impress you:
Jeremy: “Well there’s this girl Stephanie from California who’s brought us about a million things, the best one being an electric scooter…”
NN: “WHAT?! Seriously??”
Jeremy: “Honestly man, she’s well cool. Number two would be our tour manager, who I guess is more of a friend than a fan (but he still loves our music so I guess he counts). He gave us each a Nintendo DS so we can play each other on the tour bus, which was awesome. The best one though by far is when a few fans put together a book for us. It all started because Hayley had put this post on our webpage about writing ‘Misery Business’ and how she was ashamed of writing it. The book was a response from some of our fans who read this. Each piece of paper in the book had a different story written by a different person about something going on in their lives, and it was a really cool way to get to know some of our fans. It meant a lot to us too.”

And finally, what about your top three moments as a band?
Jeremy: “Well, when we got signed has to be there. Number two would be after we got to be on MTV and they put these massive billboards with our faces on around Times Square. The third would be at ‘Give It A Name’ festival when we played to the biggest crowd. There were like, 20 thousand kids surrounding the stage, there to see us. It was the best feeling ever and all the other bands who were playing there were really nice too; we’ve never met so many big names. We even got to have dinner with My Chemical Romance, which was pretty awesome!”
Josh: “Indeed. Before we go though, we just want to say thank you to all our fans, and we hope that everyone will keep on rocking!”
NN: “Um yeah… Right on… Errrr...”

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